Senator Frerichs Office- Week Nine

This Monday our Chief of Staff Laurie has traveled down to Springfield to train Senator Frerich's new legislative assistant. Therefore, I once again headed up the office. Although, I spent a relatively small amount of time in the office this morning. Today the University of Illinois held its annual Government and Non-Profit Career Fair at the Illini Union. Since I will hopefully finish with my Master's next May barring any issues I need to have my focus upon finding a job here in the near future.

I spent the morning in the office tweaking my resume and updating pertinent information. However, sadly the turnout at this year's career fair was dismal. On average, the career center states that 50-60 organizations usually attend the event. This year only 19 organizations attended the event which meant that options were extremely limited.

I have my sights set on working for the FBI. I believe I have the experience which is needed to be succesful within the organization. I chose not to apply for entry into a new program last fall in order to complete the CLP program. Needless to say, a former IIW roommate was accepted into the program. Lets just hope I chose the right path.

Tuesday morning, Laurie arrived back in the office. She had car trouble last night on her way back to Champaign for a meeting. She was supposed to be in Springfield to finish training Mike's new legislative aide.

I spent the majority of the morning working on a series of constituent issues and continued to work on emails in the inbox.

Lately, I have been working on a case for a gentleman who is looking to apply for his private security contractor's license. Although, he does not meet all of the requirements. He does have extensive security experience but has not worked 3 of the past 5 years for a licensed security firm in a management position. The Senator is looking to possibly assist this individual by inserting a clause with regard to former security experience. I will continue to follow up with the individual by email.

Too, one of the constituents I have been working with decided to stop by the office today. This individual is one of those constituents who you know you have done all you can and refuses to accept the answer. I spoke with her the other day and asked her to give us time to work on her request (a minor request-in addition to her main request) and she still did not heed the advice. This proved to be a bit irritating; especially since she called before she stopped by and hung up the phone on me.

Tuesday afternoon (Personal Time-Lunch with Fiance's Grandparents)

Wednesday I began work in Springfield. The Senator has placed me in the Senate Communications Office at the moment. This morning I began to make calls to a wide-variety of media organizations across the state in an effort to update each media list of all Democratic Senators.

I followed up this request which took a significant amount of time with making more phone calls in an effort to seek out organizations which would be interested in attending a media event organized by Senator Schoenberg. Senator Schoenberg has a bill that prohibits Illinois insurance companiesfrom having investments in countries that fall under the U.S. Dept ofState's definition of "State Sponsors of Terrorism." He would like tocoordinate a media event in his district with various community groupsthat would have a vested interest in this matter.

Thursday I continued to work on updating media lists for the Senate Democrats. I was also given an assignment to seek out quotes of all Republican Senators which made mention of pension reform.

Friday I returned to the district office and wrapped up the weeks work with a variety of emails constituent work etc.